With details of this competition, workshops and more:
Deadline for Flash Prize tomorrow!
Tick-tock,
clock is ticking down! ⏰
The deadline for submissions to the WestWord Flash Prize is
tomorrow. You have until 23.59 UK time to send your stories inspired by the
theme: DREAM. Cash prizes and publication for all shortlisted and winning
writers. Deadline: 31st July 2024 Max word count: 1000 Entry fee: £9 submission only / £30 with feedback Online anthology publication: September 2024 PRIZES:
Theme:
Dream
Judge:
Amy Barnes
Amy is the Co-Editor at Gone Lawn, an Associate
Editor at Fractured Lit and was a
reader at Retreat West for several years. She is also the author of three
collections: Mother Figures (ELJ Editions,
2021), Ambrotypes (Word West LLC, 2022), and Child Craft, (Belle
Point Press, 2023). Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, the
Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 in
2021 and 2022, and included in The
Best Small Fictions 2022. Or upgrade your subscription to Westword and get a free entry
included, as well as monthly Zoom workshops, craft posts and lots of other
submissions to WestWord. Online Workshops
Over at Retreat West we have a workshop with Ken Elkes of Writing Talk this week. Forget Show Don’t Tell - Embrace Seduction
Not Instruction
Wed
31 Jul 2024 19:00 - 20:00 BST
This workshop takes on the so-called golden rule of Show Don’t
Tell and introduces the more holistic and useful guiding principle of
Seduction Not Instruction. Show Don’t Tell, is often hammered home in a
misunderstood and oversimplified, reductive way, which can lead to
overdramatised, clichéd writing that slows the pace, feels clunky or feels
inevitable. And it also leads to writers fearing Tell, which is a really
necessary tool, especially because you can’t and shouldn’t dramatise
everything. Through a mixture of exercises, examples and guidance this
workshop will explain the principles of Seduction Not Instruction to help
enhance your writing. Everyone with a ticket also gets sent the replay link. This workshop is included with Retreat West Community
memberships. You can join here (memberships start at just £5 a
month or £50 for the year) or buy a ticket just for this event. Workshop Host: K.M. Elkes is the author of the short fiction collection All That Is Between Us. He has been
longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award and individual short
stories have won, or been placed, in a number of international writing
competitions. His flash fiction have appeared in more than 60 literary
anthologies and journals, and has won prizes including the Bath Flash Fiction
Award, Fish Flash Prize and Reflex Flash Prize. His work has appeared in Best
Microfiction, and he is a Best Small Fiction and Pushcart Prize nominee. Summer Story Starters
Also at Retreat West, I’m running a series of summer workshops
for short story writing. You can book individually or book all four for a
discounted price. Each 1.5 hour session will include an analysis of a
short story (these will be circulated ahead of time,) and a deep dive focus
on a specific element of the story for the craft development discussion and
workshop exercises, which will get you writing new drafts inspired by what
we've read and discussed. You can book each session individually or book all four at
once for a discounted rate. Replay links will be sent afterwards too. We'll be looking at short stories by Mariana Enriquez, Colin
Barrett, A.M. Homes and Yoko Ogawa.
The next WestWord workshop with me is in August. Included with
paid subscriptions or you
can just buy a ticket to come along. Writing What We Don't Know
Sat
31 Aug 2024 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM BST
Wherever we are in the world, whatever ethnicity, gender, age
we are, whatever era we live in, we are all going through the same things as
humans. Trying to find our truth, love, happiness and peace of mind. And this
is at the heart of all stories we tell. Our characters are doing those exact
things too. And what I have come to believe in my 51 years of being a human,
and 15 of being a fiction writer, is that how they, and we, achieve these
things is all related to trust. The journey our characters go on throughout our stories,
whether they are novels or micro fictions and everything in-between, is
driven by trust — in their own mind, abilities, judgement, beliefs, strength.
Typically at the start they trust in something that no longer serves them and
by the end, learn to let that go and place their trust in something more
hopeful, healing and reliable. So as writers, we can trust in our abilities as empathetic
humans to be able to tell the stories of people vastly different to us. We
can trust in the power of our imaginations to set our stories in places in
the world we've never been, and in places that we completely make up. But to
do any of it well, we need to be coming from a place of truth and we need to
trust ourselves and our characters. Workshop Host Amanda Saint is the author of two novels, As If I Were A River
(2016) and Remember
Tomorrow (2019), and a novella-in-flash, Pressure Drop (2024).
Her short fictions have been widely published, placed and listed in lots of
international prizes, including the Mslexia Flash Fiction Prize and Fish
Flash Fiction Prize, and nominated for Best Small Fictions 2023. She’s been
working with writers to help them develop their craft for many years. In
2012, Amanda founded Retreat West (Winner Most
Innovative Publisher 2020 Saboteur Awards), providing an online writing
community, competitions and courses, and in 2022 started the WestWord literary journal.
She also writes The Mindful Writer and The Tao of Storytelling on
Substack. © 2024 Amanda Saint
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